Constantly growing demands from the costumers in the Automotive industry forces the subcontractors to seek alternative ways to compete. One parameter of quality is the components tolerance against NVH(Noise, Vibraion & Harshness) aspects. Kongsbergs Automotive has developed a new gear shifter platform (Shift-by-Wire) that is sold to Alfa Romeo and used in of their car models. However, the company is not pleased with the components sound quality, therefore the main purpose of this thesis is to develope a number of concepts that is supposed to enhance these NVH-aspects.

To get an understanding of the problem an analysis of the causes of the emitted sound has been done parallell to a product decomposition, function decomposition and a Ishikawa-diagram. Together with these methods has a litterature study been performed to get familiar with the physics of an impact and especially the emittment of noise. The concepts has been generated through a combined brainstorming and brainwriting session. A number of concepts has been developed that should reduce emitted noise. To evaluate the concepts generated has well proven methods for screening been used, such as: analysis of pros and cons, feasibility analyis and Go/No-Go.

The definite concept uses a method that absorbs the kinetic energy induced by the user through a built-on component and an energy absorbing foam. The idéa is that the built-on component and the foam should transform more of the kinetic energy to heat energy.

The consequenses of this study is that the company now has a fully applicable concept to evaluate the idés effectiveness regarding reduction of noise. Next step is to make a prototype and evaluate the idéa.

Since the making of a prototype has not been done, the biggest restriction in the thesis  is that the developed concept is not evaluated regarding its effectiveness of reduction of noise.